Mumbai University yet to declare dates for 2017-18 final exams; college principals fear more chaos, delayed results

Mumbai University students may be looking at another year of chaos and results being delayed, with the varsity again failing to complete assessment of examination papers on time. The final semester exams typically take place by the end of March, but with just days left, the university hasn't even declared the exam schedule yet.

A college principal told The Times of India that the university is still busy assessing papers from the November exams at a time when it should ideally be filling forms and printing hall tickets for the March exams.

File image of Mumbai University. Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

"Not all students have filled exam forms, hall-tickets have to be made, even the schedule for the first and second year exams are to be released," the principal was quoted as saying.

These remarks come just days after a Hindustan Timesreport said around 100,000 answer sheets answer scripts are still to be assessed and around 150 results have yet to be announced, showing that the varsity has failed to learn any lessons from its 2017 debacle.

In 2017, the Mumbai University had come under sharp criticism for its unprepared and half-baked implementation of an online assessment system, leading to a delay in results. After several postponements and chaos that lasted nearly four months, the varsity finally declared results for April-May exams in September 2017. The results should have ideally be declared in June-July.

Even then, "close to 10,000 results were still on reserve" and the varsity was yet to assess more than 4,000 papers. Following the fiasco, vice-chancellor Sanjay Deshmukh was sacked in October 2017.

According to a separate report on Hindustan Times, the university is still facing a crunch in the number of teachers to carry out the assessment of papers, mostly from the law department. "Less than 200-300 teachers report for assessment these days as compared to 3,000-4,000 who did so when assessments began, and that's what is causing a delay in announcing results," Vinod Malale, deputy registrar (public relations), examinations department of Mumbai University, was quoted as saying.

The varsity, however, appeared confident of finishing everything on time. "We are trying to keep the exam dates similar to last year; there should not be many delays. The main exams usually start in April," The Times of India quoted an official as saying.